JavaScript 26th birthday! Node.js officially tweeted to celebrate

The day before yesterday, December 4th, was the 26th anniversary of the introduction of the programming language JavaScript.

On the same day, the official Node.js Twitter also posted a special celebration: "Happy 26th Birthday, JavaScript".

This is a day full of joy. The reason is that JavaScript and the sexy aunt Marisa Tomei and rapper Jay Z in "Spider-Man: Away from Home" celebrated their birthdays on the same day, and most of the reason was that in 1995, JavaScript The legendary significance brought by the birth.

Because in 1995, three programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, and PHP came out "getting together", but JavaScript is the most talked about among them.

Next, let us review the exciting views of JavaScript when it first appeared 26 years ago:

On December 4, 1995, to commemorate the release of JavaScript, Netscape and Sun Microsystems jointly issued a press release.

The manuscript version claims that JavaScript will be an "easy to use" scripting language designed to "create real-time online applications."

Once this news was released, it received praise from the industry giants at the time.

Attached are the opinions of members of the technology industry (one of 28 leading companies in the industry) on the "fledgling" JavaScript in 1995 (note: the title is taken from the report at the time):

"JavaScript is an exciting technology because it represents the next generation of software designed specifically for the Internet. HP is committed to open standards and is a supporter of JavaScript because it complements HP's open system architecture."—— Jan Silverman, HP Department Manager

"JavaScript is a great way to access the database by scripting across platforms and move the generated data to Macromedia Shockwave, where it can be rendered, animated, and made into real-time interactive multimedia for the Internet. JavaScript It is also a promising core technology of the new multimedia publishing tool that Macromedia is building."-Bud Colligan, President and CEO of Macromedia

"JavaScript brings the powerful function of rapid multimedia application development, and realizes cross-platform movement at the operating system and architecture level. We are very happy to integrate this powerful language into our developer programs."-America Online Mike Connors, President Technologies

"JavaScript matches the content creation and application development tools of the Silicon Graphics suite. This combination will benefit the industry by developing richer interactive applications."-Tom Jermoluk, President and CEO of Silicon Graphics

"AT&T's support for JavaScript is not just a support for cool technology, but a support for open standard processes. Open standards are as important to the success of the Internet as open connections."-Tom Evslin, Vice President, Gateway Services, AT&T

"JavaScript will allow us to easily create personalized small programs for Excite services. These small programs, combined with the rich functions of Excite services, will be more fully integrated into the user experience when users explore and browse the Internet."-Chief Technology of Architext Software Officer Graham Spencer

"JavaScript and Java represent important steps in the development of the Internet and enterprise computing intranets. JavaScript allows Internet applications to easily connect to production databases, such as CA OpenIngres.."-Nancy Li, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Computer Associates

"Tools like JavaScript will unleash a new wave of creativity and change the Internet in ways that no one can predict. JavaScript and other developments will require improved system performance..."-Rose, Vice President, Internet Business Group, Digital Equipment Corporation Ann Giordano

"By enabling real-time online applications, JavaScript will benefit users. These applications require a powerful database engine for content management... By cooperating with Netscape, we will bring web users the best online database and real-time interaction Technology." Phil White, Chairman and CEO of Informix Software

"SCO looks forward to supporting the JavaScript language on our OpenServer and UnixWare product lines. JavaScript will enable developers to create more exciting and interactive Web-based applications than ever before, enabling them to work on increasingly complex networks. Advantageous Internet users required for competition in the user base."-Richard Treadway, Vice President of SCO Layered Products

"We plan to use the power of JavaScript to integrate our own automatic document indexing and summarization technology. The power and use of our technology greatly enhance the server and provide timely and valuable documents for web clients."-Iconovex Corporation Sales And Robert Griggs, Vice President of Marketing

"Creating a common, standard scripting language for Java development will accelerate the adoption of this new and exciting technology to provide consumers with dynamic, real-time content. Metrowerks will support JavaScript as part of our efforts to use Java tools as the new Internet The preferred programming platform for development."-Greg Galanos, President and CEO of Metrowerks

"JavaScript enables developers to create powerful new multimedia rich applications in a platform-independent development environment."-Dr. Michael Stonebraker, founder and CTO of Illustra Information Technology

"Verity is very interested in Java because it is a powerful tool that can provide dynamic display functions and client-side operations on search and proxy platform results. Configurability is a key advantage of Verity servers, and the availability of JavaScript is for non-programmers. Utilizing the capabilities of Java objects provides an ideal tool to customize the look and feel of Verity applications."-Steve Zocchi, Verity Internet Marketing Director

"Paper Software plans to use JavaScript as the glue to allow our development partners to combine Java, plug-ins, and Paper's multi-dimensional VRML user interface in a distributed online application." -Paper Software CEO Mike McCue
......
Of course, all of the above comments about JavaScript in the early days will of course appear to be somewhat "historical" when viewed today, 26 years later. But in any case, that was the most cutting-edge point of view at that time.

The "dramatic" birth of JavaScript

As one of the most popular programming languages in the world, JavaScript has been loved by many programmers since its debut in 1995, whether you agree or not.

But in fact, the birth process of JavaScript is also quite dramatic.

The time was set back to 1994, when Netscape (Netscape) in the United States released version 0.9 of the Navigator browser, but because this version of the browser can only be used for browsing, it does not have the ability to interact with visitors. Therefore, Netscape urgently needs a web scripting language that enables the browser to interact with web pages.

It just so happened that Netscape saw the Sun company officially launched Java (formerly known as Oak language), so it was a little bit moved, and then connected with Sun company.

In April 1995, the 34-year-old system programmer Brendan Eich was hired by Netscape.

It is understood that Brendan Eich's main direction and interest at the time was functional programming, but Netscape recruited him for the purpose of studying the possibility of using the Scheme language as a web scripting language.

A month later, in May 1995, Netscape appointed Brendan Eich as the designer of the new "simplified Java language".

In order to cope with the tasks arranged by the company, Brendan Eich only took 10 days to give a design version-Javascript.

His design idea is roughly like this:

• Use the basic grammar of C language for reference;
• Draw lessons from the data types and memory management of the Java language;
• Use Scheme language for reference to promote the function to the status of "first class" (first class);
• Learn from the Self language and use a prototype-based inheritance mechanism.

Due to the short period of time, some details of the language were not considered rigorously, resulting in a long period of time afterwards, the program written in Javascript was chaotic.

Therefore, the Javascript language is actually a mixture of two language styles, namely (simplified) functional programming + (simplified) object-oriented programming.

It is said that if it were not for the company's decision, Brendan Eich would never use Java as a prototype for Javascript design.

As a designer, Brendan Eich doesn't like his work at all:

It now appears that although the original intention of JavaScript was very simple, it has developed unexpectedly and has become a programming language widely used and learned by programmers.

About JavaScript

JavaScript is usually abbreviated as JS, which is a high-level programming language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification.

JavaScript is usually real-time compiled and multi-paradigm, with dynamic typing, prototype-based object-oriented, and first-class functionality.

In addition to HTML and CSS, JavaScript is also one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web. Data shows that more than 97% of websites use this language for web client operations and often incorporate third-party libraries. All major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute code on the user's device.

As a multi-paradigm language, JavaScript supports event-driven, functional, and imperative programming styles. It has an application programming interface (API) for processing text, dates, regular expressions, standard data structures, and document object model (DOM).

JavaScript engines were originally only used in web browsers, but now they are the core components of some servers and various applications. The most popular runtime system for this usage is Node.js.

Don’t confuse JavaScript with Java. Although there are similarities between JavaScript and Java, including language names, syntax, and their respective standard libraries, the two languages are different and have very different designs. .